Paco Roca

(b. 1969, Spain)

Rides

Paco Roca is one of the main representatives of the new wave of Spanish comic artists. Born in Francisco Martínez Roca in Valencia, he began his career as a regular contributor to the magazines published by La Cupula in 1994. He made erotic comics starring Peter Pan and Aladdin for Kiss Comix with his pal Rafa Fonteriz, and he created the experimental 3D comic series 'Road Cartoons' with Juan Miguel Aguilera for El Víbora. Several of Roca's early works were deeply rooted in Spanish culture and history, such as 'El Juego Lúgubre' ('Lugubrious Game', 2001), his fictionalized story about Salvador Dali, and 'El Faro' (2004), about the Spanish Civil War. It were these comics that meant Roca's breakthrough in other European countries, such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, through distribution by Strip Art Features.

El Juego Lugubre

His 'Hijos de la Alhambra', the first and only book in his series 'Las aventuras de Alexandre Icaro' was published directly in France in 2003. His critically acclaimed graphic novel about old age, 'Rimples' ('Rides'), was published by Delcourt in 2007. It won him several awards, and was adapted into an an animated film in 2011. 'Rimples' was followed by new graphic novels like 'Las Callas de Arena' ('Streets of Sand') and 'Emotional World Tour', the latter in cooperation with Miguel Gallardo.

Memorias de un hombre en pijama

Roca started his semi-autobiographical Sunday strip 'Memorias de un hombre en pijama' in the newspaper Las Provincias in 2010. It was announced in 2012 that Roca would make an animated film based on these stories himself. He subsequently made 'El ángel de la retirada' ('Ange de la retirada') with Serguei Dounovetz, about life in refugee camps in France after the Spanish Civil War (6 Pieds Sous Terre, 2010), and 'El invierno del dibujante', about the group of comic artists working for the Bruguera magazine Tio Vivo in the 1950s (Astiberri Ediciones, 2011). He also hosts a radio show called 'La Tertulia Friki' with graphic artists MacDiego and Modesto Granados, and writer Ramón Palomar for the Valencian radio.